A tribute to Legend Entertainment games
 

The games made by Legend in the late 80s to early 90s are sadly neglected by adventure gamers. While they have a somewhat cult audience, the bulk of adventure fans will not have played them. Those who have played them will look back on them with no small amount of nostalgia. I feel they surely deserve a place alongside Lucasarts games, Kings Quests and Gabriel Knights.

So to all new initiates and nostalgics, let's embark with a guided tour through these classic games!

Spellcasting
http://www.mobygames.com/images/shot...screenshot.png
A series of 3 games, you are a student sorcerer plunged into a save-the-world situation. There are very funny jokes and situations throughout the whole game, which uses a zork-like text interface where you type in what you want to do, but this was updated later to a selection from a list of verbs.

Eric The Unready
http://www.mobygames.com/images/shot...of-beautys.gif
This is an hilarious zork-like medieval adventure. It has a great interface where you select from a long list of verbs and also has a list of objects - no pixel hunting! You get a map as well, so no getting lost. Overall a fantastic experience everyone should try.

Gateway 1 + 2
http://www.mobygames.com/images/shot...hom-in-the.png
Two games which are basically one split into two parts. The interface is similar to Eric, and the sci-fi themes are fascinating and very involving with the ability to explore many locations and worlds.

Companions of Xanth
http://www.adventureclassicgaming.co.../497/497_4.gif
One of the funniest games ever made, it's a fantasy adventure where you are sent a game from a friend, and upon starting it up you are sucked into your computer into the world of Xanth. The interface is improved from earlier games. Lots of lateral thinking puzzles. You can click an action on literally anything and get a humorous response.

Death Gate
http://i.ytimg.com/vi/37PUTs_VKiw/0.jpg
A more serious game than Xanth, but still highly entertaining. It's based on a series of fantasy books, so if you're into elves and dwarves you'll love this. The graphics have improved from Xanth and is also on the easier side.

Shannara
http://www.mobygames.com/images/shot...itive-verb.png
The last of the fantasy games from Legend and the last one to use the same interface, this one involves some (very minor) RPG elements like combat. Great graphics, voice acting and story.

Mission Critical
http://www.mobygames.com/images/shot...-to-repair.png
Back to the sci-fi theme, this one features real actors including Michael Dorn from Star Trek. The universe they managed to create is vibrant and unique, with an amazing story.

Callahan's Crosstime Saloon
http://www.mobygames.com/images/shot...allahan-ss.png
My personal favorite, a quirky and hilarious journey through time and space. You will meet all kinds of zany characters and solve puzzles to save the universe. This really is a must play game for any adventure fan.

Aahhhh.... great thread! :)

Callahan's Crosstime Saloon is my favorite too, but I haven't played/finished all the Legend adventures. You forgot(?) my second favorite one: Timequest.

http://img84.imageshack.us/img84/3883/timequest.gif

They made an awesome transition from parser games to purely graphic games.
The parser still can scare some modern players too, sadly.

My favorite is Eric, I think, and the least interesting to me is probably Shannara.
(Didn't play Mission Critical though)

Lots of nostalgia, once more :)

Edit : And of course Fien is as always the gourmet elite of AdventureGamers :)

Yes I must play Timequest. I haven't finished all the Spellcasting games either. For the record, my 2nd favorite is Companions of Xanth.

Oooh, Eric the Unready looks cool! Um, I don't mean the naked girl, I mean the medieval setting. :P

Glad to know somebody else remember this wonderful adventure company!

Legend produced lots of excellent games in every single genre. By the way, you forgot to mention Blackstone Chronicles, a tribute to John Saul and horror genre. One of the best psychological horrors in the history of PC gaming in my opinion.

But my favourite games are TimeQuest (what a concept!), Death Gate and the 2nd Gateway game.

You should probably also mention a talanted designer team that contributed to Legend: Bob Bates and Steve Meretzky of Infocom fame, Glen Dahlgren, Mike Verdu, Josh Mandel, Corey and Lori Coles and more.

Great thread. Really like Legend Entertainment. And I just playing Callahan and Shannara - best way to learn english :) My favourite is Mission Critical, but Death Gate and Blackstone were also amazing adventures.

I will add Superhero League of Hoboken to the list.

http://www.abandonia.com/files/games...0Hoboken_3.png

Well done Oscar!

Legend games are.. well - legendary, and while i agree they are underrated to some extent, i also feel they are collectively often praised as sort of a "bridge" between plain text adventures of 80s and later graphic revolution by LucasArts, Sierra and others.

Of course, still a lot of text in the interface can prove tiresome to those players who grew up on smart cursor (and that's the reason where we might look for the "underrated" factor), but there's definitely some special fun with it. Personally though, - i prefer Shannara to Eric the Unready interface, but those older titles have even bigger sense of freedom, like any other text adventure.


My personal favorite is Companions of Xanth with a magnificent atmosphere combining fantasy and humor with a lot of puns

http://www.thelegacy.de/pics/screen/...8_Xanth025.jpg

but also when i started playing Shannara recently, i was stunned at high value of it, from dialogues to splendid graphics. And of course, Callahan's Crosstime Saloon with its smart references to pop culture.

Question about Timequest removed. What's the point, even the people who claim TQ is their favorite Legend game are silent.

Any tips on getting Callahan's Crosstime Saloon to work on XP?

No Starship Titanic or Blackstone Chronicles in your list? I agree they are one of the most unappreciated AG developers.

DOSbox.

Starship Titanic was not made by Legend Entertainment.

I posted this here a while back on the anniversary of its release:

New Callahan's Crosstime Saloon DOSBox Installer

Eric The Unready looks interesting :P I'll have to try that one. TimeQuest was awesome. Thanks for this thread!

I hope to play it in the next couple of weeks, as I'm working my way through the ones I haven't played, namely Spellcasting 201 and 301 and Timequest. Blackstone too, hopefully.

Although, for those with a moral conscience hesitant to play it I don't blame them considering the price, and especially if their computer lacks a 5.25" floppy drive.
http://www.ebay.com.au/itm/Timequest...item1c1e295c7c

Me, I think I'll just download it. :)

I wish I could answer your questions (about the ending?), Fien, but I never played TQ to finish it. I played it for the experience. Just mocking different historical leaders like Hitler or Churchill is enough to claim it my fav) And the complicated concept is really cool, but the game seems too time-consuming to play straight to the end. Hope it doesn't sound very weird.

Oscar
There's always an excellent The Lost Adventures bundle ;) And it's worth the money!

Really? 100 dollars? Considering Legend's been dead for 10 years I think if I had any moral qualms, (which I don't) I'd rather download them and send some cash to Meretzky and the other talents involved. Better than some ebay profiteer.

You can try out one from Amazon for just 55 bucks) But I see your point. I also hate to pay lots of money just for the rarity.
Although I would pay 100$ for a new Legend adventure game, oh yes!

Ooh, this thread is a feast for the eyes. I've been intrigued by many of these games for a long time, but almost all of them are so expensive at ebay! :frown:
Sure, if I could find a brand new, complete release with low shipping cost, I might spend that much. But not on every title! Also, the auction you posted doesn't even include the box. No way is that worth $100.

There is another reason I haven't been all over these games the way I perhaps should. Since most of the designers come directly from Infocom, I suspect many of the games share some of the hair-pulling aspects with their IF forefathers. Dead ends, unforeseeable death scenes, struggling with the text parser, you name it.

Blackstone Chronicles didn't have anything like that, and that was a great game. I've been curious about the rest of Legend's catalogue for a long time, and all those screenshots definitely don't make me think otherwise. But I doubt all of them will be able to match Blackstone.

I played the first Sourcerers game all the way through. It was fun though I played it so long ago that I don't remember much more about it. There was a whale involved IIRC...

No, no, I ment a completely new game from a reunited Legend. Which will never happen, of course :frown:

Dead ends and time limits were one of the main reasons I never completed Spellcasting series. Steve is merciless.
But I can't say the same about other Legend games, especially those that came out after 1993. Even in Gateway 1-2 or Eric the Unready most of the deaths could be "undo"ne without fear. And there are very few dead ends as far as I'm concerned.
Death Gate, Shannara, Callahan's - those play just like you normal graphical adventure games.

I was very fond of Legend as a studio devoted to more IF-like adventures. They should definitely be remembered for successfully continuing for many years certain traditions established by Infocom. However, I have mixed feelings about some of Legend's specific games.

I haven't played them all yet, but my favorite ones so far are Death Gate followed by Gateway. Those 2 were brilliant. I just wish Death Gate was a bit more challenging.

Spellcasting 101 didn't do it for me (nasty puzzles and not my kind of humor) and I never tried the sequels. Xanth and Eric were fun, but uneven and too silly to care sometimes (I prefer to play similarly pun-infested Quest for Glory games instead). Shannara was a nice piece of adventure gaming lite, but somewhat modest in its ambitions.

I was completely bored by Mission Critical and gave up on it after an hour or two - I don't understand the appeal it has for many people. Blackstone was very well made, but it finally disgusted me to the point I stopped playing near the end. Far too much physical and mental torture for me to stomach.

Oh, and Superhero League of Hoboken had a neat premise, but was weakly realized and repetitive.

Oh, now I see. Thanks for clarifying that. I suppose it's time to start saving up for some of these. :)

I loved the Legend games. Callahan's Crosstime Saloon is always in my top-ten favorites of all time list. Unfortunately, it and Shanara, which I didn't like, were published/distributed by Take2. I don't believe it was the happiest of relationships, and may have lead to the ultimate demise of Legend.

I didn't think much of Shannara either, it's probably the weakest Legend game. It looked very similar to Death Gate but I felt that the writing wasn't nearly as good. It didn't have the humor of Xanth or Gate and I'm not really into the straight fantasy stuff, so that might have something to do with it. But I did like some of the characters, and the ending was really well done.

Another fan of Legend Ent here. Already enjoying text adventures, the addition of a graphical window, not to mention an ever present inventory, for me at least provided further immersion. Timequest, Eric, and the two Gateway games would be my favorite. Xanth had some great imagery, but many of the puzzles were of the '...really?' variety. Of their later games Callahan's and Blackstone were both very interesting, the latter being horrific in its description of actual early medical procedures.

Apologies if this has been posted already, but I just ran across a recent interview with Josh Mandel regarding "Callahan's Crosstime Saloon".

It's on Matt Chat, which is a long-running series on Youtube. Lots of good interviews with developers...

I love the Legend adventures. Callahan's and Blackstone Chronicles are certainly on my top-ten favorite adventures of all time. I wish they hadn't done so much medieval fantasy games, I can't bring myself to enjoy that kind of setting :(

It is a tragedy they went under. They were the only company to focus on adapting literary works to the adventure genre, and no other company has picked up the torch since. Their games were sophisticated, intelligent and well designed. I miss these types of games a lot.

Legend was, simply put, the most consistently good adventure game company. LucasArts, Sierra, Infocom, they all had their duds. Not Legend. Since this thread has been revived, I'd like to mention that I've been working on an exhaustive article that will cover the history of Legend in addition to reviews for all their games :)

By far their most overlooked title is Mission Critical, which is in my opinion the best sci-fi adventure ever made.

The first half is quite run-of-the-mill alright, but it's the surprisingly great second part that elevates the game to its cult status. The conclusion is one of the most thought-provoking in the history of gaming, period.

For me, Gateway 1 and especially 2 were far superior. But Mission Critical had its moments, although the only thing I ran recall nowdays is that smart strategy game.
And please let us know when the article is ready :) The world needs more great articles about this wonderful company.

It is a shame Mandel seems to have given up on adventures for the moment. Is any of the other Legend developers working on something adventure related? I would love to pay for their games and play them :)

Certainly, the Gateway series come very close. Both installments. But it's the poetical conclusion of Mission Critical which literally made the game for me; rarely has an ending improved my views so much. In retrospective, it's the Legend title that has stuck with me the most (and bear in mind I'm a hardcore fan of Gateway, including the books).

So far the Legend team have been working on social games mostly. Bates and Verdu work at Zynga for example. Kind of discouraging, yes, but you never know what the future can hold...

I think Mission Critical's critical flaw is that as a player you have little reason to care about this critical mission. You never knew the crew, you never knew their plight, heck, the only person you get to know better is the traitor! Not exactly a smart storytelling choice.
I was disappointed by the sterility of the spaceship and by the lack of traces the crew left behind that could've told of the lives they lived on board. Maybe then I would've cared about this mission. Instead, I simply shrugged.

But the game does indeed get better later on and the ending moved me quite a bit. So I'm glad I didn't stop playing! It's not a classic, but it has its worthwhile moments.

I think the problem with Mission Critical is that they show us what happens to the ship in the intro, and then put us into the protagonist's shoes who is not supposed to know what happened. The first half of the game relies on mystery and atmosphere of being on an abandoned ship, but when we know everything that happened there is not much to engage you except the puzzles. Then again, the fact some people loved it and saw it as Legend's best game suggests otherwise.